Taxonomy term

ardi

Ardipithecus ramidus was a hominid that lived in Ethiopia’s Afar region 4.4 million years ago. After spending more than a decade studying the species, scientists can now provide a sketch of what the hominid looked like:

Brain:Ardipithecus had a brain size similar to that of a female chimpanzee, about 300 to 350 cubic centimeters.

Stature: Standing 120 centimeters tall and weighing 50 kilograms, Ardipithecus was about the size of a chimpanzee.

At 4.4 million years old, Ardipithecus ramidus is not the oldest known hominid. In 2002, scientists announced they had discovered a hominid skull from the Sahel region of Chad. Named Sahelanthropus tchadensis, the species dates to about 7 million years ago. And a few years earlier, scientists had announced the discovery of several hominid fossils, including a thigh bone, in Kenya that dated to about 6 million years ago. They named the species Orrorin tugenensis.

Lucy, the 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis fossil, has long been the poster child for early human evolution. But now she’ll have to share the spotlight with an even older hominid. After spending the last 15 years studying an ancient hominid species about the size of a chimpanzee, scientists revealed details about the 4.4-million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus in a press conference today.